Composing a story from scratch comes naturally to some people. For the rest of us creating a story from scratch can be a struggle. Over the years I’ve found that using pictures helps a lot of students get started on crafting stories.

Curation can boost your profit and help your people grow. It can save millions, reduce frustration, and boost the velocity of information in your organization. It starts in a gallery. You expect the curator of an art gallery to know the collection and to: search out the best items select for the collection authenticate and …

There is a certain magic found in rolling up your sleeves and tackling a project head on, an undeniable sense of empowerment that results from solving problems and manifesting big ideas. In essence, that’s the soul of the maker movement — creative individuals from all walks of life united by an insatiable desire to improve the world around them. Although synonymous with 3D Printing, it extends far beyond a single technology or buzzword. Truth be told, the maker movement represents the instinctual drive of our species to ascend ever upwards: to innovate, design, and construct a better tomorrow.

People always seem to be complaining about this... our children are distracted... who wants to read when they can play games, but in effect children tend to copy their parents. By instilling a passion for reading from a young age we can try to balance out the claim that the young children do not like books or reading. One story a day... just like the apple, helps develop the creativity in children. It doesn't hurt by having the children making up their own stories and writing them together with their parents!

Richard Byrne writes: " Book trailers are short videos designed to spark a viewer's interest in a book. Having students create book trailers is an excellent alternative to traditional book report projects."

Educational makerspaces (EM) and maker education (ME) have the potential to revolutionize the way we approach teaching and learning. The maker movement in education is built upon the foundation of constructionism, which is the philosophy of hands-on learning through building things. Constructionism, in turn, is the application of constructivist learning principles to a hands-on learning environment. Thus maker education is a branch of constructivist philosophy that views learning as a highly personal endeavor requiring the student, rather than the teacher, to initiate the learning process. In this philosophy of learning, teachers act as a guide for inquiry-based approaches to the development of knowledge and thinking processes. Upon reflection, it is natural to believe that the learner should initiate learning, as it is physically impossible for any teacher to mechanically rearrange and reinforce the physical neuronal pathways developed in the brain during the learning process.

It appears that Twurdy, a search engine that provided lexile scores, no longer exists. Cool Tools for Learning has this new post that provides two alternatives to help students find leveled text, Google Advanced Search provides a search by reading level and Wikipedia is also available in Simple English.

More information on these tools is available in the post. Students may also use a tool called Readability-Score.com. Paste in the text and it will give you the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level as well as Gunning-Fog Score, Coleman-Laiu Index, SMOG Index and Automated Readability Index. For this tool to be useful students would need to understand what they are looking for. Find it at http://www.readability-score.com/

BookLamp is a book analytic engine powered by the Book Genome Project. BookLamp's technology has applications in book discovery, reader advisory, and book suggestions similar to how Pandora.com analyzes music.

When I was 11 I loved designing web pages and playing Sim City. Adults in my life didn’t recognize these skills as valuable, so neither did I. Actually, I began to feel guilty for using my computer so much. In high school I stopped making web pages altogether to focus on sports. It wasn’t until c

"Whether it’s Minecraft or duct tape wallets, the kid-passions that seem like fads, if not totally unproductive, can alternatively be seen as mediums for experiencing the virtuous cycle of curiosity: discovering, trying, failing and growing." Zach Klein

Last week, someone criticized my makerspace as not being a “real” Makerspace because it does’t have power tools and suggested that I research what “real makerspaces” are. Part one of my response to this criticism was my post last week http://renovatedlearning.com/2015/04/02/defining-makerspaces-part-1/ where I looked for definitions from a variety of research and writing on makerspaces. Today, I’m looking at what the Twitterverse had to say.

It seems to me that a rigid 'definition' of a such a far reaching concept defeats the purpose of the movement itself. My sewing designs are as representative of the product of a maker space as NASA robots are. Part of the reason classrooms are so in need of maker spaces today is because of the tiny pigeon hole educational curricula have been forced into.

No question at all, we have come a long way from having Powerpoint as the king of the heap of presentation software. The variety of options on offer, and the range of capabilities are wide, diverse and individually tailored to the needs of presenters. The day of one-package-does-it-all is over. Microsoft themselves seem to have realised it and ar pitching Sway as the successor to Powerpoint. Interesting times ahead.

Ann Hagedorn writes: "When you say parents, middle school students, books, and reading some believe that it equals a recipe for disaster. Well, a few years ago a co-worker and I decided to try out this recipe- we created what we called a parent-child book club (still hate the name, but we couldn’t come up with anything better)."

Jennifer LaGarde's sold-out ISTE presentation, “How to Survive the Zombie Librarian Apocalypse!,” struck a chord among teacher librarians. Her talk hinged on a statement she'd once heard: “There are only two types of librarians: zombies and zombie fighters.”

If you are a teacher hesitate to use Google Docs, this will take you step by step with templates and ideas. Online webinar recording sponsored by EasyBib. Of course, check out Susan Oxnevad's website Cool Tools for 21st Century Learners - Google Docs

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Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.